


All My Wolves Begin To Howl (Wake Me Up, The Time is Now)

by MYuzuki



Series: Batfam Week 2018 [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Batfam Week 2018, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is Robin, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Sheila Haywood Is A Bad Mother, Time Travel, also just a bad person in general, also this fic is vaguely crack-ish so sorry about that too ;D, i suck at tags as always so sorry about that XD, we've got two Jasons here because time travel ;D
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-19 16:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15514320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: Jason's not quite sure how it actually happened. One second he's fighting some meta-human who calls herself Nyrtia, then the next thing he knows he's waking up in a dingy alley halfway around the world with a strange tattoo on his arm.Things only get worse when another woman named Adrestia finds him and he realizes that it's not where he's woken up that's the problem - it's when.[A.k.a. that fic where Jason gets blasted back in time by an Etruscan goddess to April 13th (two weeks before his death in Ethiopia) and has to decide whether to change things or let it happen all over again to that younger version of himself.]





	1. My Genesis (This Is Where It All Begins)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, everyone to my piece for Day 5 of Batfam Week 2018. I had some trouble with this one, because it was the sort of ficlet where I was super excited about, like, my concept for it, but then I had trouble executing my vision, lol. XD 
> 
> That being said, I still had fun writing it and it's certainly not the worst thing I've ever written, so I hope all of you enjoy it at least a little bit as well. ;D 
> 
> (Also, this was originally going to be just a single installment, but it ended up being longer than I'd originally planned so I ended up having to actually chop it up into different chapters, lol.)

**CHAPTER 1: My Genesis (This Is Where It All Begins)  
**

* * *

Jason wakes up with a bitter taste in his mouth, a burning sensation on his left forearm, and an ache in his left side that hints at cracked ribs.

He's also without a single clue as to where he is, aside from 'in an alley'. Which theoretically should be all he needs to pinpoint his location (he is, after all, intimately familiar with every single rat-infested alley of Gotham), but he doesn't recognize his surroundings  _at all_. Even the  _air_  feels different; dry and warm instead of damp and chilly like Gotham.

(It feels familiar somehow, but he can't pinpoint the reason why.)

He blinks some blurriness out of his vision and moves to sit up, cursing under his breath as his head spins and his heart pounds in his chest. "Fucking hell," he grumbles under his breath. "What the hell did that bitch hit me with?" And it had to have been something that meta-human woman had done; one moment he'd been chasing her, trying to retrieve an artifact she'd stolen from a museum, then she'd shouted something at him in a language he didn't know and flung out a hand like some sort of imperial queen.

Then everything had gone dark, and he'd woken up here (wherever 'here' was, anyway).

"Well, well, well," an unfamiliar voice says suddenly, far too close for comfort. "Of all the things I expected to see today, this was not on the list."

He has one of his guns up and pointed at the newcomer's face before his brain even really finishing processing what they'd been saying. "Who are you?" he demands, narrowing his gaze at the hood hiding their face. "Show your face!"

If they're upset by the firearm pointed their way, they show no sign of it, instead lifting their hands up to tug the hood down without any hesitation whatsoever. "Relax, stranger. I mean you no harm."

Jason's surprised to see a young woman who seems to be about his own age, at least in terms of physical appearance. (There's a depth to her eyes that suggests something more, but he's in no position to worry about that right now.)

"Are you going to shoot me?" the woman asks now, sounding curious rather than frightened.

"Are you going to give me a reason to?" Jason retorts.

"Not on purpose," she responds wryly, lips quirking up into a faint smile. She tilts her head slightly and regards him intently, gray eyes keen and searching. "You," she tells him, tone turning more serious, "are not where you are supposed to be."

Jason snorts in amusement despite himself. "No kidding," he mutters. "This is very definitely not Gotham."

"Gotham?" she echoes, eyebrows lifting in blatant surprise. "No, this is not Gotham. Gotham is on the other side of the world, stranger."

Well, shit. Had Nyrtia used some sort of teleportation magic on him? If so, how could he reverse it? Could he reverse it, or was he going to be stuck here until he figured out how to get home o his own?

"You're also not when you're supposed to be," the woman remarks after a moment of silence, and Jason's so distracted with his own thoughts about getting back to Gotham and tracking down Nyrtia that it takes him a minute to realize what she's saying.

"Wait, what?" Jason is on his feet in an instant even though he doesn't remember consciously deciding to stand up. "What do you mean, not  _when_  I'm supposed to be?"

She gives him a vaguely irritated look. "I meant exactly what I said. You're a man out of time, stranger. Someone has displaced you from your time stream. Or something," she adds, frowning slightly. "The energy around you feels vaguely familiar, and yet…" She shakes her head. "Show me your arm," she demands out of nowhere, making a grabbing motion with her hands that should have looked silly but somehow didn't.

(Well, maybe it does look a  _tiny_  bit silly, but Jason certainly isn't going to say so, not when she might be just as crazy and dangerous as Nyrtia for all he knows.)

Jason eyes her suspiciously, but holds out his left arm, careful to keep the gun in his right hand trained on her the entire time. "If you try anything," he says warningly, grateful for the modulator in his helmet that makes it come out sounding twice as menacing, "I will shoot you."

"All I'm trying to do is help you," the young woman fires back. "You don't need to be such a paranoid  _kolotripa_  about it."

"Can't help it," he replies, feeling a sharp stab of amusement despite himself (it's not every day someone calls him an asshole in Greek, after all). "Paranoia's a family trait. What are you looking for, anyway?" he asks, watching her with mounting curiously as she slowly rolls up his sleeve to examine the skin of his arm.

"Well, if my suspicions are correct, then there should be - ah, there it is," she says suddenly, her fingers brushing across a tattoo that he definitely did not have before.

"What the hell is that?" Jason demands, scowling at the marking. It almost looks like a sun, but in place of the solar rays are nails, with the points all aimed inwards toward the central circle.

"In layman's terms? A countdown." Adrestia releases his arm and takes a step away, looking at his gun pointedly. 

He, just as pointedly, doesn't lower it. "A countdown to _what_."

She narrows her eyes at him, but answers. "A significant event in your life," she tells him. "Nyrtia can only send people backwards or forwards in time in relation to most impactful moments in their lives. There are fourteen nails shown in the marking she put on you,"she goes on. "Which means that you have fourteen days until whichever key event she used as a focal point occurs."

Jason considers this, then asks the next most relevant question. "And what happens to me when that event comes to pass?"

"That depends on you," Adrestia answers. "If you do nothing to interfere in the time-stream, history will proceed as it did the first time. If that is the case, you will return to whatever time you were displaced from."

Well, that doesn't sound nearly as complicated as he'd feared. "Awesome," he says, finally holstering his gun. "So all I have to do is make it through the next two weeks without significantly altering my past self's life, and I get sent back to my present. I can do that."

Adrestia arches an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?" she asks. "You don't even know what focal point Nyrtia sent you to."

"I don't need to know," Jason says. "If I don't know, I won't be tempted to change it," he reasons.

"Hmm," is her only response, her expression thoughtful as she looks at him.

"What are you still doing here, anyway?" he asks her, crossing his arms. "Most girls run the opposite way when guys with guns threaten to shoot them."

She rolls her eyes. "I am not most girls," she says scathingly. "I might not be as powerful as some of my relatives, but I'm hardly helpless. Besides," she adds, "I'm curious. I've been trying to clean up Nyrtia's messes for years, so I've met quite a few of the people she's displaced. But you're the most interesting person she's ever targeted."

"Interesting, huh? And why is that?"

"You're reacting to your displacement in the time stream differently than all the others I've encountered. Most peopl panic, but you're just being…pragmatic, I suppose." She shrugs, still peering at him intensely. "It's an interesting change of pace, that's all."

"Believe it or not," Jason says wryly, "this is not the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. Honestly, it might not even make the top ten."

She wrinkles her nose at him. "If you say so," she replies doubtfully. "In any case," she goes on, "as someone who's job it is to assist Nyrtia's victims, I can offer you a place to stay until your countdown has reached it's conclusion."

Jason eyed her warily, suspicion creeping back in. "What's the catch?" he asks.

She scowls at him. "There is no catch," she snaps, looking almost offended. "My duty is to help those who have been displaced; at the moment that is  _you_. If you don't wish to have a roof over your head for the next fourteen days and nights," she adds hotly, "then I'll take my leave right now and you can fend for yourself."

"Alright, alright, relax! Sheesh, you're a bit high-strung, aren't you?" Jason rolls his eyes. "I accept your offer for shelter, happy now?"

"Ecstatic," she grumbles, clearly disgruntled. "Follow me," she adds, gesturing for him to follow her as she wanders off down the alley towards a smaller pathway.

"Why is helping Nyrtia's victims your 'duty', anyway?" Jason asks as he trails after her, figuring that as long as they're more or less getting along, he might as pump her for information; who knows what might come in handy once he returns to his own time, after all. "Is it by choice, or did someone assign the job to you?"

"A bit of both, I suppose," Adrestia replies with a sigh. "My original duty is to…keep the balance, I suppose you could stay. Maintain the equilibrium. Somehow, in the last few years that turned into me traveling the world and cleaning up the messes left behind by an ancient Etruscan goddess who is bitter that no one remembers her anymore. The greatest irony," she adds, "is that the Nyrtia of this time, right now, is not even causing any trouble. It's her future self that is the problem, but we have no way of figuring out what sets her off in the first place and starts her on her rampage. Thus far the consensus has been to leave her alone lest we make the future version of her even worse."

"Why not just kill her? The her that exists now, I mean." Jason asks, because that honestly seems like the simplest solution.

Adrestia nearly trips over her own two feet. "Didn't you hear what I just said? She hasn't done anything yet!"

"But she will," Jason points out. "And you know that she will; the very fact that I'm here at all is proof of that, right? SO why not eliminate the source of the problem before it even becomes a problem?"

"Morality of the issue aside," she replies, leading him out into a street that's busy with foot traffic, "there are laws in place governing those of us who are something beyond mortal. And in addition to that, I don't think that Nyrtia  _can_  be killed. She simply reforms if she takes fatal damage, or at least that's how the stories go. It's how she's survived this long, I think, even when she has no followers to worship her and give her extra power."

Jason curses under his breath as they duck into another alleyway and head for a flight of wooden stairs that seems to lead up to small studio apartment. "Of course. It couldn't just be easy for a change."

"Don't worry about Nyrtia," Adrestia tells him, pulling a dull brass key out of her pocket to unlock the apartment door. "Sooner or later the others will decide to do something. When that times comes, even if I don't manage to capture her, eventually someone will. And when they do, there are methods that can be utilized to neutralize her. For now, you and I need to focus on getting you through the next fourteen days without altering the timeline."

"Sounds good to me," Jason says, stepping into the studio then freezing in place as he catches sight of the newspaper on the table. It's written in a script that he recognizes, but mroe importantly than that he recognizes the date, all three parts of it: day, month, and (most importantly) the year.

"It's the 13th?" he asks, voice cracking as his hands start to shake.  _Nyrtia can only send people backwards or forwards in time in relation to most impactful moments in their lives_ , Adrestia had said.

Adrestia looks at him in open confusion. "Yes. April 13th."

 _You have fourteen days_ , she'd said.

Fourteen days until April 27th.

"What's wrong?" Adrestia asks now, expression shifting from confusion to concern.

Fourteen days until  _the day of his death_.

"Change of plans," he announces, picking up the newspaper and crumpling it in his hands. "You and I are going to change history."

* * *

It takes him the better part of six and a half hours to convince Adrestia to help him.

Her job is to clean up Nyrtia's messes, after all, and he's a guy she's just met who's asking her to throw all of that out the window. He gets that; he does. But this is the sort of chance that he'll never have again, a chance to stop everything that went wrong.

(Well, not everything. But most of it. He can spare his younger self from all that pain and anger and betrayal, and with that chance handed to him on a silver platter, how can he  _not_  take it.)

Eventually, Adrestia agrees. He's not entirely sure why; he's pretty sure that she's some sort of goddess, too, albeit a quirky one with so-so people skills, so surely she has better things to do than entertain his ambitious plan to change the course of his own life. Maybe she's bored, maybe she's curious, maybe she just thinks it'll be entertaining to watch him try and fail to change his own fate. Whatever her reasoning, she agrees to help him.

"You have to understand, though," she tells him, "that if we do succeed in changing things, then you won't be able to return to your future. You'll be stuck here, in the past."

Jason considers that. For all of five seconds. "Doesn't matter," he decides. "Fixing my death,  _preventing_  it? That's worth the cost, even if it is for a different version of me." He can give this younger version of himself a chance at a better future, a future where Jason isn't viewed with suspicion and disdain by Bruce, the only father he's ever had who's been worthy of the title.

(If he can spare this version of Jason the agony of his death and save both him and the rest of his family from the madness and bloodshed and grief and guilt that follows, he's willing to pay just about any cost.)

Adrestia looks at him for a long moment, her expression carefully blank. Then she lets out a long sigh. "Very well. Your reasoning is sound, so I don't see any reason to stand in your way." She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. "How should we proceed?"

"Well, killing the Joker is definitely on our to-do list," Jason remarks, his trigger finger itching at the very thought of it. "But our first priority needs to be protecting my younger self; I'm-  _he's_  Robin right now, which makes him a target. Joker killed me to get to Batman, the first time around, so our job is to stop that."

Adrestia tilts her head, considering. "Very well," she says. "But what of Batman himself? He will surely notice us once we begin interfering with the Joker's operations."

"I'm counting on it," Jason replies. "If we have his attention, we can warn him. Tell him what's going on. I don't want him knowing who we are," he adds hastily, seeing the severe look on his quasi-partner's face, "but he deserves to know that the Joker's trying to kill his son, don't you think? Look, if we're careful it should be fine."

"We'll need to be  _very_  careful," is her response. "There is no precedent for what we are attempting to do, so even I don't understand the potential ramifications of him finding out who you really are. It's probable that there would be no negative effect aside from the emotional impact for the two of you, but there is no guarantee."

"Okay, so we'll be really,  _really_  careful," Jason says, rolling his eyes. "Look, I know how to be subtle okay? You don't need to worry."

* * *

"How exactly," Adrestia asks two days later, as they're speeding away from an exploding warehouse that had previously housed a weapons cache that the Joker had been planning to smuggle out of Ethiopia and across the world to Gotham, "was that subtle?"

"Just focus on driving, will you?" Jason snaps, firing several shots at their pursuers as Adrestia yanks the steering wheel to one side in a hasty maneuver to avoid some debris in the road. "I don't want to have 'Died in a car chase' on my second tombstone, thank you very much."

"Well, maybe if  _someone_  hadn't blown up a weapons stash that just so happens to be  _right next door to a criminal hideout_ , we wouldn't be in a high-speed car chase right now!"

"Look on the bright side," Jason says, shooting out the tires of an enemy vehicle to knock it out of commission, "we'll definitely have gotten the Joker's attention now."

"Yes, three days earlier than we planned! I thought we were going to be subtle," Adrestia laments, executing a sharp turn onto another road to avoid a burst of machine gun fire from behind them. "What happened to subtle?"

"What can I say, Addie?" Jason says lightly. "When we went into that warehouse and I saw all those guns that belonged to the Joker, all I could think was 'Man, it would really piss him off if I blew these up'. And here we are."

"You're crazy," Adrestia says, sounding torn between amusement and resignation. "I've hitched my wagon to a complete and utter lunatic. My parents are never going to me hear the end of this. Assuming, of course, that they're going to even want to speak me after hearing about me helping to blow up warehouses."

"Warehouses full of illegally purchased weapons," Jason reminds her. "Make sure to include that part; it usually softens the parental disapproval."

"Speaking from experience?" she asks dryly.

"Yep," is Jason's immediate response. Then, "Alright, I think we lost them. Pull over into the first alley you see and we'll continue on foot."

"Continue on foot to where?" Adrestia asked, sounding vaguely exasperated as she parks the vehicle and hops out.

Jason leads the way down the alley, a pistol held in one hand just on the off-chance that some thug jumps out at them. "To go and find Robin, of course. If memory serves, my younger self should be meeting with an informant about half a mile from here in about, oh, twenty minutes."

Adrestia's quick strides screech to a halt and she turns to gape at him. "You can't be serious," she says in blatant disbelief. "Your idea of a good plan for changing the future is to just, what? March up to the you of this time and tell him to stop what he's doing or the Joker will kill him?"

"I was going to be a little more low-key than that and start off with 'The woman you came here to find is working for the bad guys', but yeah, I guess that about sums it up."

Adrestia starts muttering Greek obscenities at him under her breath, but allows him to grab her by the elbow and tow her after him down the alleyway. "Your definition of subtle and my definition of subtle seem to vary greatly," she grumbles as they emerge from the other end of the alley a few minutes later.

Jason huffs out a low laugh at her sulky tone. "Well, look at it this way: at least we can be sure we're changing things."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Just make sure to keep your helmet on," she reminds him. "Especially once we crash this informant meet-up. If Robin recognizes you as a future version of himself, it'll cause mroe problems than it'll solve. And we have enough problems already."

"You worry too much," Jason tells her, "We've barely gotten started; I doubt anyone even knows enough about our involvement so far to realize that we're worth paying attention to."

"Alright," Adrestia replies, expression still doubtful. "If you're sure."

"I am," Jason assures her. "Even Batman shouldn't be onto us yet; in the original version of events, he didn't even realize that the warehouse we just blew up existed until four days from now. So even if the explosion attracts some notice, it's unlikely that he'll have tied it to the Joker already, much less made the connection that we blew it up to piss off the Jokey. That delay while he works it out  _should_  give us a little wiggle room."

"It could also backfire spectacularly and have him descending down upon us demanding answers," Adrestia observed dryly.

"That is also a possibility," Jason acknowledged, "but I'm trying to be optimistic here, okay? Would it kill you to take a glass-half-full approach?"

Adrestia makes a face like she's about to start cussing him out in her native tongue again, but then seems to think better of it. "Let's just hurry up and go meet your stupid younger self, okay? The sooner we get that over with the sooner we can move on to the next suicidally idiotic part of our plan."

Jason makes a mental note to buy his friend something sugary and caffeinated at the earliest opportunity to appease her cranky wrath (minor Greek goddesses liked mocha frappuchinos, right?) even as he continues leading the way to the location where robin is going to be meeting with in informant in less than fifteen minutes.

(He just hopes that this meeting with his younger self goes at least a little smoothly.

He doubts it will, because he knows himself and knows how stubborn and prickly he was at that age, but he's hoping it goes well anyway.)

* * *

Bruce frowns as he reviews witness testimonies from the warehouse explosion.

(He's already read all of the reports at least five times, but none of it makes any more sense than it did the first time.)

He'd been planning to investigate that warehouse himself and shut down the weapons smuggling operation that was supposedly based within the building.

But someone else, it seemed, had beat him to it, shutting the warehouse down in one of the most explosive ways possible (literally; forensic evidence currently suggested that there had been no fewer than individual explosives detonated throughout the warehouse).

Someone who, according to some of the eyewitness statements, wore a red helmet and body armor with a red  _bat_  emblazoned on it.

It is, in Bruce's honest opinion, a disturbing development.

He'd come here, to Ethiopia, to stop the Joker's latest mad scheme and had planned accordingly. This new player throws a wrench in those plans, because not only does Bruce not know where the other man had come from to begin with, he also has no clue as to this newcomer's motivations.

He'd like to think that this person had blown up the Joker's warehouse to stop the weapons shipment that had been about to leave, but it seems far more likely that's a rival criminal.

Or even worse, there's also the possibility that it's someone working for the Joker, who'd blown up the warehouse to destroy evidence when they'd heard that Batman was on the way. After all, red helmets had been all the rage back in the Joker's pre-Clown Prince of Crime days as the original Red Hood and it would certainly be in line with the Joker's twisted sense of humor to paint a bat symbol on one of his thugs as a way of mocking the real Batman.

All in all, the whole situation is such a mess that it makes him glad that Jason is back safe and sound in Gotham. He's no doubt furiously sulking (as only a fifteen year old can, really) about being grounded from crime-fighting, but Bruce would much rather have his son safe at home and angry at him than tangled up in this mess and in danger right alongside Bruce.

It's a bit harder for Bruce to work alone since he's gotten used to having a partner, both in Jason and Dick before him, but something about this whole situation with the Joker feels more dangerous than usual (feels  _wrong_  in a way he can't quite logically describe) and consequently he's quite happy to have Jason at a safe distance.

For a brief moment, he entertains the notion of calling home to the Manor, checking in with Alfred to see how Jason's doing.

He reluctantly dismisses the thought, though; he has work to do in Ethiopia, and Alfred is more than capable of looking after Jason (especially since they all know how much Jason adores Alfred).

He'll just have to wait until he returns to Gotham; then he can talk to his son in person and get to work on mending the rift that's been growing between them these last few months.

Bruce doubts it'll be easy, but he's not worried; once he's done with this business in Ethiopia, he'll have all the time in the world to reconnect with his son.


	2. Heed the Warning (From the Shadows)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Chapter 2, folks! In this chapter, we have past!Jason meeting Red Hood and Adrestia (who is somewhat trying to disguise her appearance but admittedly not trying very hard, lol) followed by past!Bruce meeting Red Hood and Adrestia. Essentially, this chapter boils down to past!Jason being a stubborn teenager and Bruce being…well, Bruce. XD As always, sorry for any typos or OOC-ness. ;D

**CHAPTER 2: Heed the Warning (From the Shadows)**

* * *

 

Jason Todd, aged fifteen, is no stranger to shady meetings. Even before he'd eavesdropped on hundreds of them as the Robin to Bruce's Batman, he'd lived on the streets and witnessed plenty of sketchy happenings in the seedier sides of Crime Alley and the Bowery.

So why is it that this meeting, which should be straightforward, is making his stomach churn with anxiety? Is it because he's in the middle of a foreign country, with the sun beating down on him mercilessly when he's used to the gloomy overcast skies of Gotham? Is it because he's operating on his own, with no Batman (or even Nightwing) to back him up?

Or is it because the informant had promised information on his birth mother?

Even after coming all this way with nothing more than a faint hope tinged with desperation fueling him, he still can't shake the nervousness clinging to his bones at the thought of actually meeting his mother. That anxiety is equal in measure to the anticipation rushing through his body.

After all, he'd loved Catherine Todd as his mother for his entire life and that would never stop, but the thought of meeting the woman who'd given birth to him made something in his chest do somersaults despite his vague misgivings and insecurities.

He's so eager to get information about his birth mother, so focused on finding out more about Sheila Haywood, that he's thrown for a bit of a loop when he enters into the dingy little cafe he was supposed to meet his informant in only to find that informant knocked out, gagged, and duct-taped to a chair.

"Well, well, well," a man in a strange red helmet says once he catches sight of Jason from where he's standing with one elbow resting lightly on his unconscious prisoner's head. "Would you look at that: right on time."

"Such a surprise," his companion says from where she's leaning against the pastry counter, her voice dry. "I might just keel right over from the shock."

(Jason can't make out much of her face on account of the ridiculously huge sunglasses she has perched on her nose, but there's a wry tilt to her lips that indicates amusement at her partner's words.)

"Who are you?" Jason demands, wanting to move forward immediately to get to the informant-turned-hostage, but hesitant to make any sudden movements since the guy in the helmet has two serious-looking guns holstered at his waist. "What do you want?"

"Relax, kid," the guy says, lifting up both hands in a gesture of harmlessness that Jason doesn't buy for a second. "We just want to talk."

"Fine," Jason says. "Then talk. But let him go first." He nods at the man taped to the chair.

"Who, this guy?" Jason thumps the hostage none-too-gently on the shoulder. "Nah, I don't think I will. I mean, Kaleb here is wanted by the EPF for….what was it again? Something about starting a riot?"

"Inciting a riot, plus two counts of selling narcotics and one count of vandalism," the woman chirps, fiddling with the gemstone pendant around her neck distractedly. "He's also suspected in four separate home invasions in three different regions." She looks right at Jason and he can't help but feel rooted in place by her gaze despite the fact that he can't even see her eyes through the obnoxious sunglasses. "You really should research your informants more carefully," she tells him seriously, her expression a strange mixture of neutral and concerned. "This one is…what's the phrase? A rotten apple."

"I can take care of myself," Jason snaps at her, annoyed and defensive and not quite sure why. Something about this whole situation is just making his skin itch; feeling like he's three steps behind these two weirdos certainly doesn't help the sensation.

That seems to amuse the man with the guns; he gives a loud snort that's only partially filtered out by his helmet. "I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you on that, kid; you're way out of your depth on this one. The woman you're looking for, Sheila Haywood? Believe me when I say that you're better off leaving her where she is."

Jason stiffens, hands clenching into fists. "I can't do that," he grits out, because he  _can't_. He's come halfway around the world from Gotham, for fucks's sake, all for a chance to meet his birth mother. Granted, these two freaks have no way of knowing how powerful his motivation is, but still.

The guy in the helmet looks at him for a long moment, then gives a long, heavy sigh. "Kid…you should really let this thing go. Sheila can't be what you need; she'll turn on you without hesitation. She's dangerous."

Jason glares at him. "You have no idea what you're talking about." Even if Sheila doesn't know him, surely she wouldn't do something to endanger her son? Catherine had only been his step-mom and she'd done everything she could to take care of Jason, so surely his birth mother would do nothing less.

The guy gives a sharp laugh that's got an undercurrent of bitterness running through it, along with something that might be grief. "I know  _exactly_  what I'm talking about, Jason Peter Todd," he says, and Jason gives a flinch before he can stop himself; how the hell does this guy know his name? He'd used an alias coming here, and hadn't shared his true identity with anyone.

"Who the hell are you?" Jason demands. "How do you know my name?"

"You can call me the Red Hood," the guy answers. "My partner over here is, ah… Lady Citrine."

The woman wrinkles her nose at the Red Hood but doesn't say anything, and Jason is honestly too distracted by the first statement to pay much mind to the ridiculousness of the second. "Red Hood?" he repeats, mentally shifting through what information he knows about Gotham's crime history (courtesy of both his upbringing and his time as Robin, he knows quite a bit). "So you work for the Joker, then?"

"Fuck, no," is the immediate (and very emphatic) response. "I have no connection to the Joker other than wanting him very, very dead."

Jason is vaguely relieved; if the Red Hood in front of him is telling the truth, then at least he doesn't need to worry about his identity being leaked back to the Joker, which in turn could compromise Bruce.

(Of course, that's assuming that the Red Hood is telling the truth, which seems like an awfully big gamble to take.)

"How do you know my name?" he asks again, wishing he could reach for a weapon without it being obvious.

"How I know it isn't important," Red Hood says dismissively, waving one hand as if to brush the question aside.

(It's that motion that allows Jason to spot the edge of a red symbol peeking out from under the man's thick brown jacket; it looks almost like the edge of a bat's wing, but that's makes no sense whatsoever. Why would someone using an old alias of the Joker's be wearing a bat insignia on his chest?

Jason decides that he must've seen it wrong.)

"What  _is_  important," the Hood continues, "is that you listen to what I'm trying to tell you."

"What, that Sheila can't be trusted?" Jason scowls at the Red Hood. "You'll excuse me if I don't take the word of someone who beat up my informant and  _taped him to a chair_."

"Fair point," Hood concedes, "but largely irrelevant. Look, I'm not lying to you, kid," he says seriously. "Sheila's bad news. How much do you know about why she left Gotham?"

Jason's opens his mouth to defend Sheila, then falters. "Not much," he admits grudgingly. "Some sort of scandal at the hospital she worked at or something."

"Or something," the Red Hood agrees. "I mean, it's nothing really serious," he goes on, his voice full of blatantly false cheer. "Just a botched illegal abortion that caused the death of a teenage girl. Oh, and all the narcotics that were smuggled out of a hospital pharmacy and sold to whoever offered the best price. But hey, what's a bit of manslaughter and mayhem among family?"

Jason swallows, a sick feeling swirling in his stomach. "You're lying," he says, but the words don't come out as firm as he'd like. "She's not like that."

"What makes you say that?" Citrine asks, her tone a mix of sympathetic and curious. "You've never even met her, correct? How can you make such a judgment about her morality? Or lack thereof, in this case."

"Because she's my mother!" Jason all but snarls, his temper almost at the snapping point.

"Catherine Todd is your mother," the Red Hood says, the words sharp. "Sheila Haywood may have given birth to you, but doesn't mean anything. Sheila didn't do shit for you, kid. She got knocked up by Willis Todd and then dumped the baby on him so she could run away from her problems."

"That's not true," Jason argued, throat tight.

"She dumped you without a second thought, kid," the Red Hood continues mercilessly. "Meanwhile,  _Catherine_  raised you. You weren't even hers by blood, but she gave you all the love and kindness that she could. And yeah, you were both still stuck with Willis and I know how much that fucking sucked. But Catherine was your mom, from the start until the end. She may not have made all the right choices, either, but she tried. And that's more than Sheila ever did."

Jason feels like someone has a hand around his heart and is squeezing it. "Why are you telling me all of this?" he demands, voice cracking. "What's your angle?"

There's a long moment of heavy silence, one that Jason doesn't understand; of all the things they've talking about, of all the questions Jason has asked, why is  _this_  question the one that shuts the Red Hood up?

"Let's just say," the man says finally, "that I don't want to see someone else go down the same dead-end road I did. Okay? You shouldn't have to end up like me, and that's exactly where you're headed if you don't get your head on straight about Sheila Haywood."

Jason crosses his arms defensively. "I'm in no danger of ending up like  _you_ ," he retorts. "I know what I'm doing."

"You're  _fifteen_ ," the Red Hood says. "You have no damn clue what you're doing."

Jason can feel his cheeks heating up, though whether it's embarrassment or fury he doesn't know. "Listen, asshole-"

"This is getting us nowhere," Citrine says suddenly, cutting him off mid-sentence as she turns to face the Red Hood. "He's as stubborn as you are; he's not going to stop chasing Haywood down no matter what we say, and short of abducting him ourselves there's nothing we can do from this approach."

"As stubborn as I am, huh?" Red Hood snorts in amusement, although Jason doesn't understand why that's so funny. "Yeah, I guess should have realized that this method wasn't going to work." He shakes his head, the light glinting off his helmet. "Oh well, can't blame a guy for trying."

Citrine gives a noncommittal hum but says nothing else.

"Okay…look, kid," Hood says, turning back to face Jason. "Obviously you're not going to stop trying to find Sheila even though we've warned you that she's bad news. Believe me, I get it, she's your birth mom and you want to meet her. But for the love of everything holy, stop trying to do it alone. It's a bad idea. No, more than just bad; it's a catastrophically terrible idea."

"I have no choice but to find her by myself," Jason snaps defensively. "There's no one else to help me!"

"Oh my God, seriously?" the Red Hood says, shaking his head in obvious exasperation. "Your dad is Batman, for fuck's sake! Pick up a damn phone and call him! He'll help you."

"He'd never get here in time," Jason argued. "He's away somewhere on a job and-"

"He's ten miles to the southeast as we speak," Red Hood declares, cutting him off. "And I'm pretty sure you know that as well as I do. So stop making up excuses. I know the two of you are going through a bit of a rough patch right now because you're both pigheaded idiots with little in the way of emotional maturity, but trust me when I say that the two of you being apart right now is a  _very_  bad idea."

"Why the hell should I trust anything you say?" Jason demands. "Who are you, really?"

All he gets in response is a smoke bomb that makes his eyes sting and tear up, and by the time the smoke clears, the Red Hood and his partner are gone and Jason's left alone with nothing but his thoughts and an unconscious thug for company.

* * *

Bruce had anticipated a long and arduous game of cat-and-mouse to track down and capture the new Red Hood. And he'd anticipated needing to gather a lot of information from the local criminal element to do that.

What he had  _not_ anticipated was there being so little information to begin with.

It had been two days since the first sighting of this new Red Hood (with many sightings since), and despite interrogating approximately forty percent of the area's criminal body (most of them just petty thieves and pick-pockets because aside from the nastier thugs that the Joker has brought with him there is surprisingly little in the way of true hard crime in this country), Bruce has gotten very little in the way of useful intel.

According to everyone he's spoken to, this new gun-wielding Red Hood had more or less come onto the scene overnight; no one knew anything about him or where he'd come from. He'd just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, wreaking havoc on the Joker's Ethiopian operations with a level of intensity that was, if Bruce was being brutally honest with himself, more than a little awe-inspiring.

(It's also the tiniest bit alarming and even a bit intimidating, because Bruce is probably going to have to  _fight_  this lunatic and this Red Hood is clearly dangerous enough to make it a damn difficult fight.

He vaguely hopes that there's an alternative to fighting this vicious new vigilante, but it's a small, dim hope; more of a vague wish, really. Logically, he knows that the odds of reasoning with the Red Hood are slim. The other man has no reason to listen to anything he has to say, after all.)

Information on the Red Hood's partner-in-crime is somehow even harder to come by; Bruce hadn't even known about her  _existence_  until yesterday, when a particularly chatty informant had mentioned her in passing. Even then, after being pressed for more information, the snitch had only been able to provide her vigilante name and tidbits about her general appearance; "long hair", "large sunglasses", and "some sort of fancy gemstone necklace" is all he has to go on, and on top of that he knows literally nothing about her fighting capabilities aside from the fact that she's apparently quick on her feet and handy with throwing knives.

There's also one unsubstantiated report of her being kicked out of a second-story window by an opponent only to reappear a moment later and literally punch the perpetrator through a wall, but Bruce isn't sure he puts much stock in that particular report.

(If it  _is_  true, Bruce is going to have an even harder time dealing with the Red Hood than he anticipated; after all, he can hardly expect the so-called Citrine to stand idly by while Batman apprehends her partner.

All things being equal, Bruce is starting to regret coming to Ethiopia; if not for his moral obligation to stop the Joker, he'd be sorely tempted to hop into the Batplane right now and head home to Gotham where Alfred and Jason are waiting for him.)

In any case, he'd anticipated difficulties. But not quite to this extent.

He also hadn't anticipated the Red Hood _seeking him out_ , which is why he's completely at a loss for how to respond when he's in the middle of breaking up a burglary ring in the Meshualekya area of Addis Ababa and a vigilante in a red metal helmet just drops into the fight and starts knocking around thugs as if it's completely normal for Batman and the Red Hood to work together.

"What are you doing here?" Bruce demands once the burglars are all either knocked out or sufficiently trussed up.

Red Hood stares at him for a moment; his helmet prevents Bruce from picking up any sort of facial cues, but the other man's body language reads as a bizarre combination of annoyed and amused. "You know, for once in your life you could just say 'Thank you', you know," the Hood says. "Go on, try it; I promise the universe won't implode."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Hood," a woman's voice says, and Citrine strolls into the room, hands stuffed casually into the pockets of her coat as if she hasn't a care in the world.

(Bruce suspects that she has at least two throwing knives in each pocket, but he's still moderately confident that she's the lesser threat of the two so he keeps his focus on the Hood.)

The Red Hood makes a rude noise that's almost lost in the voice modulation of his helmet. "Okay, come on," he says, voice light despite the tension in his lean frame. " _Our_  odds of imploding the universe are much higher than his and you know it. Besides, it can't hurt to try and teach him some manners, can it?"

Citrine arches an eyebrow at him then gives a shrug. "Whatever floats your boat,  _f_ _yle mou_ ," she replies, waving a hand dismissively. "But since the little bird we warned obviously neglected to take our advice from the day before yesterday, might I suggest getting to the point? We have only ten days left, after all."

"Nine, technically," the Red Hood corrects, and then turns back to Bruce. "But she's right: We need to talk."

Bruce resists the urge to cross his arms and instead opts to loom as menacingly as possible. "I don't make a habit of chatting with criminals," he replies stiffly.

That seems to amuse the Hood for some reason; he gives a low chuckle before subsiding. "Yeah, sure you don't. Whatever, I don't care what your fraternization policy is at the moment,  _Bruce_ , we need to talk. I have some information you need to hear."

Bruce's heart pounds in his chest and it feels for a moment as if ice water is flowing through his veins.

_How does he know my name?_

Bruce has been careful, _so_  careful, when it comes to guarding his name, to keeping his vigilante and his civilian identities as far apart as is conceivably possible. He's only gotten more paranoid about it in recent years, after taking in Dick and then Jason, because he knows that if  _he's_  compromised so are  _they_. And for all his many faults, there's nothing Bruce wants less than to endanger his sons like that.

As a result, he's guarded his civilian like a wolf guarding its den; he's taken down every potential exposure threat without hesitation or mercy because the stakes are simply too high to do anything else.

So how in the  _hell_  does this punk in a helmet know his name?

"Who are you?" he demands, growling out the words in a tone that would have most other criminals wetting themselves in fright.

The Red Hood, for better or worse, is nothing like most criminals and just puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head as if Bruce is being completely ridiculous. "Who I am is not the point here, B. Seriously, I am by far the least important person in this room right now. You know who is important, though? Your little Robin, the Todd kid. You know,  _your son_? Who is, as we speak, trying to track down his birth mother and stepping on all kinds of criminal toes to do so."

Bruce's heart, previously pounding, is now all but _jack-hammering_  in his chest.

It was bad enough to know that his identity was already compromised, but for this thug to  _name his son?!_

Bruce is tempted to hurl a Batarang at the man's face, but restrains himself. Barely.

"What do you know about my son?" he demands, and something about the sheer fury in his tone must register with the Hood and his partner because both of them take a careful step back; the Hood even lifts his hands into the air in a gesture of harmlessness that Bruce finds almost mocking in its obvious falseness.

"I know that if you don't find him right away and protect him, he's doing to die," Red Hood says, and Bruce's entire world takes on a faint red tint.

"Is that a threat?" he snaps, one hand going instantly to his utility belt as the other clenches into a shaking fist.

"No," the Red Hood says, flinching slightly at Bruce's sudden movement, but not backing down. "It's a fucking guarantee. If you don't stop your kid, he's going to get his stupid ass killed. And trust me, it'll all be downhill from there. For everybody."

"Are you working for the Joker?" Bruce demands, because who else would have the sheer gall to attack at Batman's own crime-fighting partner?

"Fuck, no, I'm not working for the Joker," the Hood snarls, and he sounds so personally offended and outraged that Bruce almost wants to believe him. "What is it with Bats and always assuming the fucking worst of people? Goddamn."

"If you're not working with the Joker in an attempt to take me down, then  _why are you here?_ " Bruce asks, not relaxing his stance in the slightest.

"I am here," the Red Hood says, his tone tight like he's gritting his teeth underneath the helmet, "because I am trying to  _save your son's life_."

Of all the answers Bruce had been expecting, that had definitely not been one of them. "What?"

"You heard me" the Hood retorts. "Your stupid teenage son, Jason Peter Todd, is going to get himself killed if someone doesn't intervene. So here I am. Intervening. You're welcome."

Bruce does his best to process that statement, but it doesn't make anymore sense forty seconds later than it did the first time it filtered into his brain. "Explain," he orders, his tone brooking no argument.

For one heart-stopping moment, it almost seems as if Red Hood won't comply out of sheer obstinance, but after exchanging a long look with Citrine, who gives him a slight nod, he complies.

"Your Robin is looking for his birth mother," he tells Bruce. "Her name is Sheila Haywood, and once upon a time she was a doctor in Gotham. To make a long story somewhat shorter, she got knocked up by the waste of space you know as Willis Todd. After giving birth to Jason, she ended up having to flee Gotham because she stealing narcotics and embezzling funds from the hospital she worked at. On top of that, she was performing illegal abortions for extra cash, and ended up killing a girl in the process when she fucked up an operation."

Bruce considers this information, sifting through it quickly in his mind before nodding at the Hood to continue. "Keep going."

The Red Hood takes a deep breath, releasing it in a long sigh before speaking again. "I'm not positive about the specifics from then until now, but at the moment Sheila Haywood is working for the Joker. He caught her trying to embezzle from the relief organization she's currently working for, and now she's working for him in an attempt to get out from under the blackmail."

"She won't," Bruce says, speaking before he can stop himself. "Get out from under the blackmail, I mean," he clarifies when Citrine and the Hood just look at him. "Once the Joker has his claws in someone, he doesn't let go until either they're dead or he has no more use for them."

"At which point he usually kills them himself anyway," the Hood says, his tone flat. "Yeah, I know, I'm familiar with his methods. My point here is this: your kid is looking for Sheila in the hopes of connecting with her, but all Sheila cares about is getting away from the Joker. If she's presented with the choice of protecting a son she's never met or protecting her own pathetic life, which option do you think she'll choose, huh?"

Bruce swallows hard. "Jason is supposed to be in Gotham," is all he manages to say as the horror of the situation begins to seep into his mind.

"Yeah,"the Hood agrees, and Bruce could be imagining it but the other man sounds almost….regretful. "But he's not; he's here in Ethiopia. And if he finds Sheila, she's going to betray him and hand him over to the Joker. I shouldn't need to tell you what will happen then," he adds, an undercurrent of something dark and painful in his voice even with his helmet's modulation.

"The Joker will kill him," Bruce says, and it takes a supreme effort of will to not let his voice crack at the mere  _thought_  of losing Jason.

"He'll make it hurt," Red Hood says, his tone grim and absolutely certain. "It won't be an easy death. And there won't be any peace for your son after, either, which is why you need to stop it before it happens."

"It's not too late," Citrine agrees, speaking for the first time since the start of the conversation. "If you find your son and stay with him…if the two of you work together and don't split up, you can save him. He can leave Ethiopia alive, instead of inside a coffin."

The Red Hood shudders at the words 'inside of a coffin' and Bruce wonders at it, but not enough to distract him from the situation at hand. "Do you know where he is now? Has he already found Haywood?"

"Not yet," the Hood replies. "We can't be entirely sure of how things are playing out anymore, but we've been keeping tabs on your wayward Robin." He turns to his partner. "So, where's the punk at?"

Citrine lifts a hand and touches the jewel on her necklace; it glows faintly for a moment before dimming. "The tracking spell I placed on him puts him about seventy kilometers to the north of our current position. If memory serves, that means he's in or near the town of Durba. It's a fairly remote village," she adds, pushing her sunglasses up her nose absentmindedly. "It's on the edge of a river gorge, so it's pretty remote. Other than local farmers and merchants, the only real industry it has is a cement factory a bit farther to the north around the edge of the mountains."

The Red Hood nods. "Yeah, that sounds about right." He turns back to Bruce. "If you take the Batplane you should be able to get there in, what, four and a half minutes? Wait, shit, no, you've got the Batplane VI still, right? So…twelve minutes minimum, maybe fifteen if you run into headwinds. Still, not bad. The kid shouldn't be able to get into too much trouble before you find him." He glances over at Citrine. "We might actually be able to pull this off," he remarks, sounding almost awed by the idea.

"Well, I should certainly hope so," she replied, tone full of exasperation but also with a hint of fondness. "I, for one, did not come this far to fail now."

"Yeah, same here," the Hood agrees, and Bruce has rarely felt as out of the loop in a conversation as he does right now standing there with the two of them.

"What about the two of you?" Bruce asks now. "You never did tell me who you are or why you're doing this."

"...You're better off not knowing," The Red Hood says after a long, tense moment of silence; his voice has an undertone of grief to it that Bruce can't wrap his head around. "Look," the vigilante says now, "just get to your kid and keep him away from Sheila and the clown, okay? Citrine and I will handle the rest of it."

"The rest of what," Bruce begins to ask, but then suddenly Citrine lifts up both hands and makes a quick flicking gesture with her fingers and before Bruce can even finish his sentence, there's a bright flash that leaves him blinking spots from his vision.

By the time his sight recovers, he's not at all surprised to discover that the Red Hood and Citrine have disappeared without a trace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was Chapter 2, hope you all enjoyed! Chapter 3 will be posted just as soon as I wrangle everything together and finish writing it. XD


	3. Blood and Crossfire (The Tides Are Turning)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the chapter in which things go sideways pretty fast for our heroes. (Also, for anyone who's curious, the chapter title comes from the Liv Ash song "Ready for War".)

**CHAPTER 3: Blood and Crossfire (The Tides Are Turning)**

* * *

 "Are you sure that we shouldn't follow after him?" Adrestia asks, trailing after Jason as he leads the way back to where they'd hidden their latest vehicle.

"Yeah," he responds. "For all his many faults, B's not an idiot; I think we can expect him to do the right thing." He hopes so, at any rate; all the work that he and Adrestia have put into bringing down the Joker to protect his younger self will have been for nothing if Bruce doesn't heed their warning and do everything in his power to protect his second son.

(Jason won't deny the fact that he's still royally pissed off at his younger self for  _not_  listening to that same warning, but he's doing his best to set that aggravation aside for now. Focus on the bigger picture and all of that.

He can't afford to lose his focus now, after all, not when their actions have shifted everything around. There's no telling how things will proceed from here on out, so Jason needs to keep himself on task if he wants their mission to succeed.)

"If you're sure," his partner replies, taking her sunglasses off and tossing them into the glove box as soon as they reach the Jeep that they'd 'borrowed' from a local man who had, for whatever insane reason, tried to mug them the night before.

"I am," Jason replies, popping off his helmet and tossing it in the backseat before starting the car. "For now, we need to focus on dismantling the little crime empire that the Joker's trying to set up here."

"As you wish," she replies, leaning back in her seat as she fiddles with her necklace, brushing away a smudge of dirt with her thumb before tucking the magic amulet back into her shirt to hide it from view. "Which part of his network do you want to hit next?"

Jason considers their options carefully; they've already taken down or crippled about a third of the Joker's operations in Ethiopia, which means that the clown has boosted security on everything else. Throw in the fact that his younger self is still poking around in an attempt to locate Sheila, who is tangled up in the middle of everything, and they need to pick their next target very carefully.

"Batman is heading north to Durba to find Robin," he muses aloud. "And that's gonna be difficult enough for both of them without us stirring up things in that area. So let's head south instead," he decides. "If memory serves, there's a pretty big cache of the Joker's laughing gas in some old warehouses on the outskirts of Adama; let's head there."

"Alright," Adrestia says agreeably. "Although I do hope you've considered the fact that the trip from here to there is going to take up at least an hour and a half. And this car doesn't have air conditioning."

Jason groans. "Addie, come on. Glass half-full, remember? Half  _full_."

* * *

Sheila Haywood isn't an idiot.

She's always known that staying with the relief organization wasn't something she could do indefinitely; she was clever, but she'd always been realistic about the long-term viability of her embezzlement scheme.

She just hadn't anticipated _the Joker_  being the one to catch her in the act.

Because honestly, what were the odds? No one in their right mind could have predicted that Gotham's Crown Prince of Crime would show up on the eastern side of Africa with grand plans to wreak havoc and mass destruction upon the world.

Sheila certainly hadn't been expecting such a thing, and now she's paying the price; instead of running her own racket, she's stuck smuggling modified laughing gas for a garishly dressed madman.

There's also an extra level of urgency and tension to everything she's doing now; Sheila's not certain as to the specifics of why the Joker is speeding up his plans, but she suspects it has something to do with the new vigilantes who'd popped up within the last week; some guy calling himself Hood something or other, plus a woman who worked with him. Add that to the rumors of Batman that have been floating around and it's no wonder that the clown is getting antsy.

(Sheila normally wouldn't care about some so-called super villain getting his boxers in a twist, but the Joker has an unpleasant habit of taking out his frustrations on those around him. since that includes Sheila at the moment, she's been in a perpetual state of waiting-for-the-hammer-to-fall for the last week.)

Sheila vaguely wonders if she can take advantage of the situation in some way, find a means of twisting it to her advantage to get free from the Joker's hold on her, but dismisses the notion quickly.

Even with the current unrest the Joker's ranks and the disorganization in his operations right now, she'd still need a tremendous piece of leverage to secure her escape.

Or, she realizes as the Dark Knight himself strides into her little clinic two days later with his side kick trailing after him, maybe leverage isn't what she needs after all.

Perhaps all she really needs to do is serve up to the Joker something that he's been wanting: a way to strike at the Bat and make it hurt.

 _Yes_ , she muses, noticing the way that Batman hovers protectively around Robin in a way that she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been specifically looking for it.  _This might just be the opportunity I've been waiting for._

If she played this right, she could still come out on top. And not only that, she'd be getting one over on both the Batman and the Joker.

 _Let the games begin_ , she thinks, pasting a smile onto her face as they crossed the clinic lobby to speak with her.

* * *

Bruce is worried. He's doing his best to keep the anxiety under control, buried underneath the stoicism of Batman, but it's a struggle.

Because even after Bruce has finally caught up to Jason (despite the quick flight to Durba, it had still taken him the better part of two days to track down his son's specific location; he'd be proud of Jason's evasive techniques if he wasn't so frustrated), his son has still insisted on finding Sheila Haywood and meeting her.

Because Jason had refused to let it go and return to Gotham, and all Bruce can think of is the Red Hood's warning.

" _If you don't find him right away and protect him, he's doing to die,"_   has been playing on a seemingly endless loop in his brain ever since the Red Hood had first uttered the words, and Bruce can't deny the fact that's he's terrified of that declaration coming true. The Hood had just seemed so certain about everything that Bruce can't help the knot of tense anxiety that's coiling in his gut.

(He also can't help but wonder at the Red Hood's motivations again; clearly the other man's invested in stopping the Joker and protecting Jason, but _why_? What could the other vigilante's angle possibly be? What does the Hood get out of saving Bruce's son?

Also, how the hell does he know so much about them?)

But as much as Bruce wants to snatch up Jason and flee with him back to the safety of Gotham (well, back to the  _familiarity_  of Gotham, at least; the city doesn't really fit the standard definition of 'safe' and probably never would), Jason was adamant about wanting to meet his birth mother. And apparently even the fact that she was suspected of manslaughter, drug theft, and embezzlement wasn't going to deter him.

Bruce honestly doesn't know what Jason hopes to accomplish by meeting the Haywood woman; he ha no idea if his son just genuinely wants to try to connect with her somehow (Bruce himself doubts such a thing is possible, given Sheila's history of borderline sociopathic behavior), or if he just wants to meet her at least once to get some closure on his past.

(Bruce can't help but feel that there's a _lot_ going on lately that he doesn't understand; he doesn't like the feeling.)

Either way, Bruce has no choice but to go along with Jason's wishes; he is the parent here, but he and Jason are on rocky enough ground already. Besides, as long as he stays with Jason at all times everything should be fine, right? No one would dare try to harm Robin with Batman standing literally three feet away.

(Bruce reassures himself with the knowledge that even if someone does try something, Jason's well-trained in his own right. Plus they're probably not going to get past Bruce in the first place. Not with his son's life on the line.

He's never condoned killing and he's not going to start now, but he certainly doesn't oppose inflicting grievous bodily harm for the sake of protecting his family.)

"Well," Sheila Haywood says when they walk in, looking suspiciously unflustered for a woman who's just been approached by two masked vigilantes, "what can I do for you two fine gentlemen?"

(It may be somewhat uncharitable for Bruce to decide that he dislikes her based upon her smile and her voice, the first with a sharp edge to it and the second with an oily undertone, but he decides that he doesn't care. Biological mother of his second son or not, Bruce doesn't trust this woman.

Admittedly, he may be already biased against her on account of what the red Hood told him about her criminal activities, but still.)

Jason - no,  _Robin_ \- steps forward. "You're Sheila Haywood, correct?"

An expression of wariness flickers across her face, but disappears quickly beneath a veneer of politeness. "Yes, I am." She looks at them for a moment before adopting an expression of concern. "Is one of you injured? My facilities here aren't the most extensive but if you're hurt-"

"We're fine," Batman says, cutting her off; he doesn't trust the calculating gleam in her eye. "That not why we're here."

"What are you here for, then?" she asks, arching in eyebrow expectantly.

"We wanted to ask you some questions about your time in Gotham," Robin replies, and Bruce is proud of how his voice doesn't waver as he speaks to the woman who gave birth to him.

"My time in Gotham?" Sheila echoes, now looking genuinely confused. "Goodness, I don't know what possible interest you could have in that. Honestly, it's been so long I doubt I can remember anything relevant to whatever your current investigation is. I moved away from the city quite a few years ago, after all."

Robin doesn't look even remotely deterred (although Bruce can see the tension starting to creep into his shoulders). "Yeah, about fifteen years ago, right? We know. We had a few questions about why you left so…suddenly."

Sheila's expression shutters, returning to the polite facade they'd been greeted with upon arrival. "I don't see how that's any of your business," she remarks. "In any case, as I just said I don't remember much about what happened then; I was a busy woman and it was long time ago."

"So you wouldn't know anything about the untimely death of Olivia Faulkner?" Batman asks, crossing his arms and fixing her in a glare.

Sheila's gaze turns downright frosty. "I've never heard that name before in my life," she snaps, her the light quaver in her voice gives away the lie.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten about her," Robin interjects, his voice cutting. "Sixteen years old, brown hair and blue eyes? She came to you for an abortion after her parents kicked her out for getting pregnant. She thought you were going to fix the problem for her, right? Except I guess things didn't go as planned, considering the fact that she ended up  _dead_."

"What in the world are you talking about?" Sheila demands, taking several steps back and faking outrage with a level of acting ability that would make daytime TV stars green with envy. "Are you really here to make baseless accusations against me about the death of some teenage strumpet who died a decade and a half ago? Surely two  _heroes_  such as yourselves have better things to do than slander good citizens with hearsay like this!"

"It's more than simple hearsay," Batman informs her seriously. "We've received information from a reliable source that confirms your involvement with not only that botched abortion but also the theft of narcotics from your hospital as well as the embezzlement of hospital funds. Additionally, Gotham PD still has a cold case file open for Olivia's murder, along with DNA evidence acquired at the scene. Now," he goes on, "I'm not much of a betting man, but I think it's safe to say that your DNA will match the samples they collected of whoever performed that operation. Which means that you're directly responsible for that girl's death. Do you disagree?"

Sheila shakes her head, cheeks flushed red. "Do I- You're damn right I disagree! Even if what you're saying is true, she chose to undergo that procedure even after being informed of the risks! Besides, even if the DNA results are a match, you can't force me back to Gotham; there are no extradition laws between Ethiopia and the United States."

Robin jerks as if he's been slapped, face going pale as chalk beneath his mask, and Bruce decides that he's had just about enough of this whole hellish conversation.

(He wholeheartedly wishes he'd listened to the Red Hood's warnings and just taken Jason back to home to the Manor instead of indulging in his son's desire to meet this woman.)

"You will be returning to Gotham to answer for your crimes," Batman tells Sheila now, very deliberately placing himself between her position and the closest exit so that she doesn't get any foolish ideas about making a run for it. "I suggest you make whatever arrangements you need to for this clinic to continue on without you," he adds. "You won't be coming back to it."

Sheila stiffens like she wants to throw something at him, her expression tight and pinched like she's bitten into a rotten lemon. Then something sparks in her gaze, and she exhales slowly, her body relaxing as if she's giving up the fight even as she reaches for a previously abandoned pack of cigarettes sitting on the corner of a nearby table and pulls one out.

"Alright," she says after a prolonged moment of tense silence, flicking open a lighter and taking a deep drag of her cigarette as soon as it's lit. "Alright, fine. I'll go with you. But," she adds, pointing her cigarette at Batman, "I need to make a couple phone calls first. Make arrangements, like you said."

"Go ahead," Batman says, looking pointedly at the phone on the reception desk.

"Sorry," Sheila says, not sounding sorry at all, "but these calls need to be private. Not only do I have to speak with another doctor about taking over my duties here, but there are patients scheduled for today that I need to reschedule. And I can't do that with you looming over my shoulder, big boy. Patient confidentiality and all that. You understand, right?"

"You can't be serious," Robin retorts, looking both furious and wounded. "You've committed dozens of crimes, including murder, and you expect us to believe that doctor-patient confidentiality is the one thing you adhere to? I don't buy it."

"I don't care whether you believe me or not," Sheila retorts, fixing them both in a disdainful glare. "It's the truth. I have an important patient who would be very upset if I up and left without letting them know."

This is setting off all sorts of alarm bells for Bruce, but he can't find a legitimate reason to refuse her request; granted, he doesn't trust her in the slightest, but other than embezzlement and drug theft she hasn't committed any crimes since coming to Ethiopia and according to some of the information he's gathered about her clinic she has actually helped people since arriving. According to the Red Hood, she may or may not be connected to the Joker in some way, but Bruce hasn't been able to dig up any solid evidence supporting that supposition and therefore can't in good conscience use it for making a fair judgment.

(He wants to believe that there's still a shred of decency somewhere inside this woman's heart; it's probably stupidly naive of him after everything he's seen during his tenure as Batman, but he can't help it.)

"You have ten minutes," he tells her, putting some growl into it to get her moving.

"Ten minutes will be plenty of time," Sheila replies, giving him a strained smile before stepping away and into the small office at the back of the building.

Bruce watches her close the door behind her, keeps watching through the blinds of the office window as she picks up the phone from the cradle on the desk and dials a number from memory. He sees her talking quickly to whoever is on the other end of the call, a sharp gleam in her eyes as she speaks.

He can't shake the feeling of dread deep in his gut.

He and Robin did what they set out to do; they found Sheila Haywood. And not only did they find her, they're bringing her back to Gotham with them. Probably not at all in the way Jason had been hoping for, but still.

They've succeeded, so why does he feel like something is about to go horribly wrong?

* * *

Jason has never been more grateful for all the lessons Bruce has given him over the years about keeping his emotions under control.

He's not sure what he'd been expecting to find when finally presented with an opportunity to meet his birth mother but this….he hadn't anticipated  _this_.

She's beautiful and headstrong and he  _hates_  her. He hates the way she doesn't seem to feel any remorse about Olivia Faulkner's death, he hates the way she denied responsibility, and he hates that she'd continued trying to avoid answering for it even when Bruce had all but thrown incriminating evidence in her face.

 _"There are no extradition laws between Ethiopia and the United States"_ , echoes in his head like some sort of sick joke and he clenches his jaw so hard that he can practically feel his teeth grinding down from the pressure.

 _"Sheila Haywood may have given birth to you, but doesn't mean anything"_ , the Red Hood had told him.

And for the first time since the older vigilante had said it, Jason believes it.

Whoever this woman is, whoever she'd been before getting involved in drug smuggling, embezzlement, and black-market abortions…she's not who or what he'd wanted to find when he'd flown the coop in Gotham and jumped a red-eye flight to the international airport in Addis Ababa.

This woman is conniving and selfish and makes Jason want to throw up when he looks at her.

(The little kid in him dimly hopes that maybe once she's back in Gotham and answers for her crimes, once she's had time to reflect on her actions and get some sort of mental help…maybe then, he can approach her not simply as Robin confronting a criminal, but as Jason Todd confronting a deadbeat mother.

He wants to believe that there's good in her somewhere even if he can't see it now.)

He's startled out of his mental musings when Bruce, looming in the center of the clinic's reception area as only a man dressed in an imposing bat costume can, says suddenly, "It's been longer than ten minutes."

Jason stares at him blankly for a moment before recalling his father's ultimatum to the doctor about her final phone calls. "She did say it was someone important," he offers hesitantly, half-defending her and not sure why the hell he's even bothering at this point. "She's probably just trying to, I don't know, leave on a good note?"

"Hmm." Bruce doesn't look convinced, and takes a step in the direction of the office door.

Then the far wall of the clinic explodes with no warning whatsoever and Jason suddenly finds himself hurtling across the room to crash into a row of filing cabinets.

Heavily muscled thugs wearing plastic clown masks surge into the clinic through the massive gap in the wall, and before Jason can do more than swing out a fist at the closest attacker he's swarmed and beaten down.

He manages to put up a hell of a struggle regardless of being outnumbered, incapacitating at least four different goons, but then someone gets clever and whaps him upside the head with something heavy; he collapses to the ground with his ears ringing and his vision swimming.

The last thing he sees as they drag him from the clinic and out to the battered transport van they have waiting is Batman half-buried beneath chunks of debris and Sheila Haywood stepping out of the office, a smirk on her lips as she lights another cigarette.

"Tell the Joker that our debt is settled," she says to the thug in charge, but Jason is tossed unceremoniously into the back of the van before he can hear the guy's response.

 _Should've listened to the Hood_ , is one his last thoughts before his injuries catch up to him and he's dragged down into the darkness of unconsciousness, followed immediately by  _Sorry, Bruce_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that happened.


End file.
